Glenn Kubish

In the words of Darlingside , you can't live in the past, but the only way to go is to go back.   This week's Three Things goes back to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Three Things, episode 135:                            1. Tarps   It’s Saturday morning, we are in a line of festival goers that snakes down the multi-use path on Connors Road next to the dormant LRT tracks. We are waiting for the gates at the top of the hill to open. The wail of bagpipes means it won’t be long. The pipes are leading tarp holders who had been in the pen since whatever o’clock AM to their preferred seating locations at the base of Gallagher Park—where it’s flat, where you’re not fighting a slow but relentless rearguard action against gravity. The rest of us, those who preferred a decent night’s sleep, will scurry to a patch of earth on the slope of the amphitheatre, throw our tarps down and stake our claim when the gates open....

Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. We keep going, right? Three Things, episode 113:                                            1. Digging   I am drawn to the CN Tower. Not that CN Tower. I mean, Edmonton’s CN Tower at the north end of 100 Street downtown, the original CN Tower. Its name is borderline obsolete, sure. At 26 storeys, it’s not so towering. And the railway company no longer has a presence in the building, even though its logo, the good old twisted paper clip, still adorns the structure at base and tip. When I was a boy, the basement of the building housed the train station and it was from there that trips to visit the Winnipeg grandparents commenced. Waiting for Christmas morning was a snap compared to the agony of waiting for the train to wake up and, abruptly, with a jolt, head east.   “Are you looking for something ...

  Here are three things this week that delivered some happiness and gratitude this week:                                      1. Airshow   The dying tree looked fuller than usual. It had stuff in it this time. I glance at the old spruce whenever I pedal home across the bridge on 142 Street. That day it looked like its top branches were lined with cones. As I crossed the street for a closer look, the top of the tree exploded into pieces that twisted up and blew away like a dirt devil—a giant, wavy ribbon that flashed with light when the sun caught the underside of the birds’ wings. What I thought were seed cones were scores of birds flocking off together. I said wow out loud, and waited to see if the birds returned. They did. One by one, they re-attached themselves to the branches. Behind me, cars streamed by.   With little puffs of energy, the birds changed positions, like an or...